One day, Jared reports to a workout room, as per his schedule. In the work out room, he finds not only the usual alien, but also three other colonist men. It seems that the colonist men are to begin sparring with one another, using light contact.
For Jared and two of the other men, light contact means light contact. For Billy, light contact means as much as he can get away with. The alien mentor shrugs off complaints of Billy's roughness with the words, "Be a man!"
Of the four men in the group, Billy is the best and Jared the worst.
Jared fares reasonably well against the other men and improves steadily as a result of the sparring. Against Billy, Jared simply takes punishment and tries to minimize the damage.
The mock combat continues and often results in Jared being paired with other colonist men in different groups. After a while, Jared realizes that he's now in the top group. If Jared had been placed in a group at the start, it would have been the bottom group. As painful as the process is, Jared is making progress.
The little sparring contests are contested vigorously, light contact or no. Jared, rather than use his superiority to bully the lower ranking men, works his weak points against lower ranked opponents. Perhaps as a result of his strategy, Jared slowly works up until he's better than any of the other men, except for Billy.
Jared continues to take the pounding Billy hands out, as he has no other real choice. One day an idea occurs to Jared. He comments to Billy, "You know, I have improved as a fighter and I'm continuing to improve, rapidly."
Billy replies, "Yeah, so what? You still can't beat me."
Jared says, "Well no, I can't beat you, yet. However the day will come, given our comparative rates of improvement, that I can beat you. I wonder what it'll be like when I'm better than you?"
Apparently Billy also wonders. Billy begins to treat Jared a bit better, while still beating up on the rest of the men. (If you can't beat the body, work on the mind instead.)
One item of improvement Jared also notices is his ability to predict what an opponent is going to do. It's not a conscious level process; Jared simply moves and counter strikes before the opponent has really gotten started.
A second item Jared notices is his biomechanical improvement. His strikes, kicks and even grappling movements become faster and more direct. There's no longer any waste motion in his movements.
A third item of improvement is strength. Jared has always been strong. He was in the top few of the colonist men in strength when they first started exercising. His lead over the rest of the men has improved and he's now equal to or probably a little bit stronger than Billy, the only serious contender.
One day, Jared, Billy and six other men are scheduled in the main workout room. There's no advance warning of anything unusual. However, three aliens appear, in the room rather than the usual one alien.
There are to be four unarmed combat matches. The matches are to be contested until either or both of the combatants are dead. There's a 15 minute time limit. If the time limit expires with both men still alive, they'll both be put to death.
The rest of the men appeared stunned, or in Billy's case, elated.
Jared concentrates, as usual, on making as much sense as possible of the situation. The man Jared is scheduled to fight is one of the worst of the men at unarmed combat. The man Billy is scheduled to fight is also one of the worst. Billy and Jared are now the two best.
The fights aren't to be contests, but rather executions.